


Coronation

by orange_crushed



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-16
Updated: 2011-04-16
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:31:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"It is lonely when you're among people, too," said the snake.</i><br/>-Antoine de Saint Exupéry</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coronation

"You are my little prince, my heir," she'd said, smoothing his black crown into a respectable tangle. It resisted her, like a weed growing thickly in sunlight. "Don't shame me."

Sirius is not quite sure what that means.

His robes are trimmed with silver thread, very thin and very subtle, so only the faintest shimmer gives it away as he walks. Other boys and girls have gold thread and plenty of it spilling across their collars, but they part for him when he stalks through the train carriages. He snorts through his perfect nose and slams the door behind him.

"Do you mind ?" says a skinny boy in stiff, cheap new robes. His voice is mild and mannerly but it carries over the sound of the cars jolting on their tracks. He looks up at Sirius through a fringe of fine dirty-blonde hair. His hands are pale, clenched around a book, and a thin pink scar winds around one of them, up his sleeve. "Some of us want to get our reading done."

"You must be the most boring person in the world," says Sirius, sounding utterly intrigued. He sits down bonelessly and jabs him in the arm with the end of a lollipop. "Are you forty years old ?" The skinny boy slaps the sweet away with the same mild air, though his hands are fast enough to sting.

"I'm eleven," he huffs.

" _I'm_ eleven," says Sirius, with a proprietary stare. "I'm Sirius Black and I'm going to be in Slytherin. I think." He stuffs the now-linty end of the lollipop back into his mouth and sighs. "You may tell me your name," he adds. The other boy laughs. "What ?"

"I'm Remus."

"Are you a Roman ?" Sirius asks, twisting around to face him. "That's a Roman name, isn't it ?"

"Kind of ?" Remus looks uncomfortable at the half-heartedness of his answer. "I guess it used to be. Lots of things used to be Roman." He glances down at his book for a minute, as if the answer were inside. "Like Britain."

"Do you wear sandals ?" Sirius looks down and appears completely crushed and disillusioned by the sight of Remus's scuffed but sensible leather lace-ups. "I thought Romans wore sandals. Sandals and togas, unless they were gladiators. Hey, you don't suppose you're descended from a gladiator ? My favorites are the ones with the big forks and nets. I imagine you could take on just about anybody with a fork and a net. Like fish. Just think if you were stuck in an arena fighting a giant fish."

It is like that all the way to Hogwarts.

They pass through thick forests and along the wide edge of a lake; the steam engine puffs great white clouds above them and Remus traces circles on the window, idly. Sirius, not to be outdone, does a frost charm to be able to write rude words on the glass and ends up making it snow on one side of the coach. They sit alone on the opposite bench, huddled together in extra cloaks, freezing, too embarassed to go and ask one of the fifth-years to undo it for them. "What house do you want to be in ?" Sirius asks, his nose and cheeks pink, his hands tucked into his armpits. Remus thinks about that for a minute, rolling the edge of his shabby cloak between his thumb and forefinger.

"Wherever I can make friends," he says, sounding like a grownup again.

"You could be my friend," says Sirius, and adds "in Slytherin," as if repeating a charm. For the first time Remus looks surprised.

 

 

Sorting doesn't go quite the way they expect.

"There's been some kind of mistake," wails Sirius, as Professor McGonagall pries his fingers off of the Sorting Hat, one by one. She puts a firm arm around his shoulders and only smothers him a little when he tries to grab the hat off of the next child on the scroll: Blake, Adrian. "I was supposed to be in Slytherin! Slytherin," he yelps, pointing at the green banners on the far side of the hall. "I brought green socks and undershirts!"

"And you can wear them with pride in your own house, Mr. Black," she tells him, with authority. "Please take your seat." Sirius obeys at last and sits on the furthest edge of the bench with his head in his hands. The three nearest and newest Gryffindors scoot down slightly. Eventually, there is a tap on his shoulder.

"Is this seat taken ?" asks Lupin, Remus. Sirius looks up at the five empty seats around him and bangs his head back down on the table.

"No," he says, muffled by the wood. Remus sits down and grabs a buttered roll from the closest tray. "Green socks," Sirius mumbles into his elbow. "All of them totally green. What is happening ? This must be what my mother meant." He claps his hands over his face in theatrical horror.

"I don't think," Remus says, with ridiculous calm, "that people get kicked out of school for having the wrong socks."

"You can't promise that," Sirius wails.

"Oi, Black," says a very loud voice from down the bench. They look up to find a dark-haired boy with owlish glasses staring down the table at Sirius in a hostile manner. "Quit your whining. Gryffindor doesn't need your stuck-up princess act," calls Potter, James, who has only actually been in Gryffindor for all of eight minutes. Remus looks at Sirius in alarm, since the latter has suddenly picked up his fork in one hand and seems to be glancing around furiously for a net.

"Look, trifle," says Remus, desperately. "Six kinds of trifle!"

"At least I don't have broken eyes," Sirius yells down the length of the table. "Your parents should be refunded!" James shakes his fist and says something that makes the entire table blanch slightly. Remus pretends not to understand. "That's what your mother said," Sirius answers back. He stands up on the bench. Somehow, that only makes him seem shorter. "To _me!_ "

Remus wonders out loud, later, as he is scrubbing splattered pie and beef wellington out of his new robes, if there is always a mass detention and reading of the rules after the feast or if this is some kind of new tradition. Peter, a round little boy who took several croissants to the face and still smells pleasantly like butter, says he might have heard something about that before.

Neither Sirius nor James is listening; they are too busy socking each other viciously in the arm and giggling after each hit.

 

 

It is not nearly long enough before they are all back on the train again, heading in the opposite direction. This time their carriage is warm and noisy and smells like wet wool socks; the seats get jammy and covered in crumbs, and Remus only makes it through twelve pages of his book. Sirius uses his own book to prop the window open for a draft. He and James sit together on one side, and Remus and Peter on the other. Sirius has his feet up on the opposite bench, where he can prod Remus in the ribs with his toes every fifteen minutes if Remus gets too lost in his summer reading and stops talking. Two hours into the ride Remus pummels him off the bench and after that Sirius takes out his bottled-up energy on the other two.

"I'll write," Sirius promises them all, as they roll their trunks away.

"You can _write_ ?" asks James, open-mouthed, and Sirius shoves him into a column. James and Peter wave goodbye before being gathered up into the arms of their respective mothers. Remus is last; his dad is hanging back at the edge of the crowd, wearing the same calm and collected smile that sometimes peeks through in Remus's boyish self-consciousness. Sirius punches Remus in the shoulder and ducks away from his swinging arm. They stand for a second longer in the steam-heat of the station.

"Owl me," he says.

"Definitely."

"Nothing boring," warns Sirius, and Remus laughs as he walks into the throng. He is still watching Remus wheel his trunk away when a hand grips his shoulder tightly, so tightly that he cries out. "Hey, you stupid-" he starts, before stumbling over an apology. "M-mum ? Sorry mum, but you're hurting me-"

"Who is that ?" she snaps. "Who are those boys ? They look like mudb-" she catches the word in her mouth and chews it acidly for a long second, mindful of the crowd. His mother spins him around to face her and breathes hotly and angrily in his face. "Bad enough you're in Gryffindor, you're making friends with _those people_ ?" Her hand curls into his hair, almost making a fist. "Are you shaming me, Sirius Black ?"

"N-no, mum."

He thinks about that, much later, after a tense dinner and an awkward talk with Regulus, up in his old room. ("But where will _I_ go ?" his brother asked, and Sirius didn't have an answer for that.) Now Sirius lies awake in bed, the heavy embroidered sheets weighing on his knees and toes and the room dark and dusty and tired around him. He wonders darkly, with the unhappy solemnity of a child, if his mother will ever call him her little prince again. She hasn't even come to say goodnight. The walls groan and sigh and pull apart from one another slowly, like people unclasping hands. In a moment of complete wretchedness he shuts his eyes and imagines the thick, soft drapes of the school beds, the humble iron stove rattling in the middle of the room, the murmur of other voices. He opens them and there is nothing but the long window opposite the bed, and the skeleton trees clinging feebly onto life outside.

Sirius thinks about his horrible lonesome seat in the great hall, how embarassing and awful it was, how much he wanted to be somebody else. And suddenly he thinks about Remus tapping him on the shoulder, and then it's Remus trading cards on the train and sharing his shabby cloak, Remus recopying his homework when he got the thirteen-hour pox from Esmeralda Icorax and could barely stand up straight. James and Peter pushing him into the snow with a joint charge and shoving his head into the mush. Peter giving up the secret about his stash of everyflavors and Remus not saying "I told you so" eleventy-hundred times when Sirius and James ate them all and were sick afterwards. James trying out for quidditch with him and both of them getting knocked off their brooms in a matter of helpless firstie minutes. Sirius smiles for the first time in hours, thinking about it all, and shoves his face into his itchy pillow to keep from laughing.

His last thought before sleep is of something less funny and more- well, he doesn't know. His eyelids slide shut and there is the frosted train window, the palmprints and traced stars and their names written in long fingernail-scratches, side-by-side. _Remus_ in those thin, neat letters and _Sirius_ in bold.

He doesn't feel ashamed.

His dreams are light.


End file.
